Previews

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Since the game is all about keeping your blood boiling and smoking the enemies flowing toward your aiming reticle, Criterion won't bother you with such trivialities like ammunition collection and pain-in-the-ass reloads every fifteen seconds. Simply aim your weapon, pull the trigger, and laugh at the poor souls at the other end of your barrel.

If you're bothered by the disappearing bodies that plague most first-person shooters, Criterion feels your pain. Instead of sending your victims to the spirit world like a deceased Jedi, the bullet-riddled dead will stay where you laid them to rest throughout the entire level. After you're finished greasing a squad of unfortunate soldiers, you can survey the carnage with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Body damage isn't the only annihilation you'll be practicing during the course of your missions. Armed with a fantastic physics engine, Criterion pushes the boundaries of expectation even further with a fully-destructible game environment. Even basic hallways and stale interior levels come to life with the help of some well-placed bullets, as you can blow the plaster off the walls and take doors off their hinges with a shotgun.

Urban environments can be used to your advantage during gunfights. Several scripted sequences are just waiting to be triggered by a steady shot: If some soldiers are using a car for cover, take a shot at the gas tank and send the vehicle sky high. If some snipers are positioned on various levels of a hollowed out building, shoot the top floor with a missile launcher and watch it tumble downward, taking the lower floors and enemies along for the ride. If you want to rain debris down on your enemies, why not just take the entire face off a building with a well-placed grenade?

Despite the heavy processing load required to create such a dynamic destructible environment, Criterion sacrificed nothing on the visual side of the equation. The graphics easily rival some of the best-looking shooters on the market. The European city in the demo looked like a postcard (until Sullivan unleashed the fury of his arsenal, of course). Once the carnage was underway, the game comes to life. Explosions look and sound incredibly real, sending so much glass and debris flying into the air that you almost want to run for cover. Billows of dust and smoke will rise from the ashes of decimated buildings. With intense camera shake and some fantastic sound effects accompanying the action, the scope of the destruction has never been conveyed so sensationally.

Criterion is so focused on producing an amazing single-player experience that it is foregoing a multiplayer mode completely. Many hardcore fraggers may cry foul, but after they see the amazing gameplay footage, we doubt this exclusion will influence their buying decision.

We can't wait until Criterion invites us to get some hands-on time with this amazing title to see if the action stays this frantic and imaginative through the entire game. Stay tuned in the coming months for more coverage.